1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image recording apparatus used for image recording in an electronic typewriter, a facsimile apparatus, a personal computer, a word processor or the like. More particularly, it relates to an image recording apparatus capable of obtaining a multicolor image recording in conformity with image information.
2. Related Background Art
As regards multicolor image recording apparatus using ink ribbons, there have been proposed as a first system in which a number of ribbons corresponding to the number of recording colors are piled up, as a second system using a ribbon of great width (a width as great as the number of recording colors times the recording width) on which stripe-like color divisions corresponding to the number of recording colors are provided parallel to the lengthwise (feed) direction of the ribbon (stripe-painted ribbon), and as a third system using a ribbon of the recording width on which different colored portions corresponding to the number of recording colors are repetitively provided in the fashion of stripes perpendicular to the ribbon feed direction (cross-painted ribbon). These systems have their own merits and demerits.
For example, in the first system, the number of ribbons piled up increases with the number of recording colors, and this leads to the bulkiness of the apparatus and sometimes leads to the complexity of the change-over of the ribbons.
In the second system, the width of the ribbon increases with the number of recording colors, and at the same location in the feed direction of the ribbon, only one color can sometimes be used unless the ribbon is rewound, and this leads to the undesirably possibility that the change-over of the ribbon becomes complex. Also, the shift of the ribbon in the widthwise direction thereof is necessary.
In the third system, the use of a single ribbon of the recording width prevents the apparatus from becoming bulky and also eliminates the necessity of a ribbon change-over device or the like, and this third system is most popular at present.
However, even in the third system, ink strips corresponding in number to the recording colors are successively applied to a single ribbon substantially over the same length as the recording length. This generally leads to the undesirable possibility that even when one-color recording is effected, an amount of ribbon the number of colors times the recording length is consumed.
The present invention is suitable for being carried out in a recording apparatus for effecting multicolor recording by the use of a multicolor ink ribbon as described above, particularly, an image recording apparatus using a cross-painted multicolor ribbon which is the above-described third system.
Even in the cross-painted ink ribbon, the length of application of each color is generally set to the maximum value of one recording length plus .alpha., and it is rarely the case that recording is effected over the full maximum recording length, and there is the possibility that the second half of one length of application is not used.
Also, the possibility that recording of the same color is effected over several recording lengths is high and in such a case, it has been required that a construction which enables the unused second half of one length of application also to be used be adopted to thereby prevent the waste of the ink sheet to the utmost.
Further, it has also been required that non-recorded portions or portions already recorded in other colors be skipped to thereby enhance the effect of decreasing the waste of the ink sheet and the waste of the operating time.